Were you ever making a text adventure and you were stuck in the middle of the story, and either 1) didn't know where to take the story, or 2) didn't know what tasks you should have the player complete in order to advance through the adventure?

I was stuck on #2 for a while. #1 was an interesting ride: I had a premise and developed in my head where I wanted to go with it, and it kind of evolved fluidly into a pretty solid story outline as I made the game. #2 was where I was stuck. I have the game about 20% to 25% complete (just a guess, as I'm stil not sure of the scale of the game), but it was so large that I divided the game into "Days" so it doesn't overwhelm the adventurer. The player must complete specific tasks of one day in order to advance to the next one. The first "day" has a few tasks that can be carried over, but as the game has become better-defined, it seemed logical to make sure that certain tasks be completed, so that future tasks aren't "closed off" and the game be made unwinnable.

The point is, that I needed to find certain tasks to drive the game forward. So for a while, the development was at a standstill. I had finally come up with a task, but needed subtasks and puzzles for the character to figure out. Again, my ability to think of how to do this kept me stuck for a while. Eventually, I added a new character to the game, who fit in quite perfectly. Now I had some direction, and although there were a few things I had to resolve, I got the game progress rolling again!

Did anyone else have programming (OR STORY, or both) blocks like this? And do you have advice to offer other game designeers based on what you did to get out of it?